Stonehill College grad takes over at Yahoo

Scott Thompson, who grew up in Raynham, isn’t an obvious pick to lead Yahoo, but he brings to the struggling Internet company expertise in technology and operations.

Former Raynham resident and Stonehill College graduate Scott Thompson wasn’t an obvious pick to lead Yahoo, but he brings to the struggling Internet company expertise in technology and operations.

Whether that’s enough will be determined in the coming weeks and months.

Thompson, who until now was head of eBay Inc.’s PayPal online payments business, was named Yahoo’s CEO, effective next Monday. He replaces Carol Bartz, who was fired in September after less than three years on the job.

Focused on technology and operations rather than marketing or media, Thompson is “the guy who helps build the clock as opposed to tell the time,” said Gil B. Luria, an analyst at Wedbush.

Luria credits Thompson, who grew up in Raynham, with turning PayPal into a “large, fast-growing and predictable payments company.”

Yahoo will need that kind of growth to emerge from a lengthy financial funk. It has been losing ground to Google Inc. and Facebook in Internet advertising even as that market has expanded in the past few years.

Thompson, 54, will try to turn around the anemic Internet pioneer where others have failed. He believes his Boston area roots – growing up in Raynham and accounting major at Stonehill College in Easton – will help gird him for the challenges ahead.

“The Boston mindset is interesting,” Thompson said in a Wednesday interview that was punctuated by a hometown accent that he has retained 18 years after moving to California.

“That’s a tough city. Not tough in the sense that it’s threatening or dangerous. But you have to be hardy to be on that East Coast in the winter. I think that rubbed off on me when I was young. I have never lost sight that’s where it all started for me.”

If Thompson succeeds at Yahoo, “he will be a hero in Silicon Valley,” said Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Baird Equity Research. If he fails? Well, “he’ll just be another executive who didn’t succeed in turning it around.”

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